1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to dental appliances, and particularly to a dental device for insertion of a crown.
2. Description of the Related Art
Prior to application of an artificial dental article, such as a crown, to a tooth, the tooth must often be occlusally reduced, typically through grinding with a drill or the like. A full gold crown, for example, typically has a thickness between 0.5 and one millimeter, thus requiring the upper surface of the tooth to be occlusally reduced by a matching thickness so that the patient's ability to bite and chew remains unchanged following the dental procedure.
If the tooth to be occlusally reduced is a lower tooth, the upper surface of the tooth includes raised regions, which mate with and engage corresponding raised regions of a vertically opposed upper tooth. Following occlusal reduction, the upper surface of the tooth still includes raised regions and, in order to properly form and position the crown over the occlusally reduced tooth, the dental practitioner must be aware of the location and contouring of these raised regions. The raised regions are typically marked with a non-toxic material, such as resin, wax, charcoal, carbon or the like
Once the raised regions have been marked for formation and fitting of the crown, the dental practitioner must make sure that the upper surface of the tooth has been reduced enough for proper placement of the crown; i.e., once the crown has been applied to the occlusally reduced tooth, the upper surface of the crown should be positioned at a height identical to that of the surface of the tooth prior to reduction.
In order to test whether the tooth has been properly reduced in height, dental practitioners often use what is commonly referred to as “the tug test”, which involves the positioning of a frictional material between the occlusally reduced tooth and the corresponding vertically opposed tooth, and then pulling or “tugging” on the frictional material to measure the amount of resistance to removal the frictional material provides. When the patient bites down on the frictional material, the frictional material should offer a slight resistance to removal, which an experienced dental practitioner can measure in order to determine if the tooth has been reduced enough for proper application of the crown. Thus, a dental device for insertion of a crown and method of using the same solving the aforementioned problems is desired.